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October 3, 2012

Like a lot of people, I face plenty of urgent demands each day – both personal and professional. And like everyone else, I feel overwhelmed at times by the continual onslaught of demands and requests for my time. Lately I’ve felt that I’ve been extremely busy, but not anywhere near as effective as I should be. I was feeling unsatisfied at the end of the each day (and week).

I wanted to do more than simply suck it up; to work endless hours to finally – which never happens – catch up. What I really needed to do was to get a grip. And this meant more than checking off tasks on a to-do list. I wanted to be both efficient and effective, addressing both the urgent and the important, to make sure that I gave myself those meaningful accomplishments – whether they are of a personal or professional nature – that provide us with that satisfied, rewarding life and career.

So what’s an agile practitioner to do?

Since I view lean and agile as two sides of the same coin, I implemented Personal Kanban. If you are used to using sticky notes or task lists, there are some distinct advantages to using Personal Kanban.

Visualization is one of them. With Personal Kanban I can readily see what I’m concentrating on each week and each day, balancing the urgent with the important. If something new comes up, I quickly add it to my backlog. I can delegate tasks, seeing that I’ve requested information or a response from someone and I’m not getting it in enough time to complete a task by the end of the week.

I have three “swim lanes” on my Personal Kanban board, one for personal tasks, one for professional task and one for recurring tasks. I need personal and professional tasks visualized in once place because my life is not so neatly organized that I can compartmentalize m work and personal life. For me, the lines are blurred together all too much!

I prioritize my tasks as follows:

No asterisk = normal priority

One asterisk = high priority

Two asterisks = urgent, must do now

I size my tasks as small/medium/large/huge:

Small = 15 min or less task

Medium = 30 min or less task

Large = 60 min or less task

Huge = greater than 60 min task

I also follow the cardinal rule of limiting my work-in-process to drive greater throughput. And I plan for slack – which can be used for interruptions or the simple fact that some tasks may take longer to complete than expected. Slack is important because – as any Kanban practitioner will tell you – there is a difference between throughput and capacity.

If you attempt to fill your day to capacity (driving your personal utilization rate as close to 100 percent as possible) you will be disappointed because events will conspire to prevent you from completing something during the course of the day. This will have a cascading effect on every other subsequent task that will add to your stress levels and lead you towards potentially counterproductive behavior, such as short-changing a task (and inviting possible re-work later) in an effort to make up time. You will also feel less productive and successful if you end the day failing to accomplish what you set out to do.

Throughput, on the other hand, is accomplished by focusing your attention on specific, important tasks, giving yourself enough room to handle them and any other issues or problems that arise throughout the day. If you happen to have excess capacity at some point, you always have the option of pulling in more work.

My Personal Kanban board is laid out as follows (with WIP limits noted and space for recurring tasks that I can check off):

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Welcome!

I'm currently an independent agile coach, residing in Portland, Maine. My work experience includes being a developer, a development manager, product manager/chief product owner, and agile coach. This blog is about channeling my passion for business, software development and writing – with an emphasis on agile leadership. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent the views of my current or former employers.